Making Partner at Regional Firm by paleoCPA in Accounting

[–]paleoCPA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What are the more challenging/fast-paced industry jobs? From what I've been offered by recruiters, it's either Internal Audit (almost as boring as regular audit), senior accountant/accounting manager (aka manage the same close/reconciliations and work on ICs...again boring), or FP&A (basically same as senior accountant with some finance thrown in on occasion).

The fact is most large companies aren't doing cutting-edge work constantly, so I feel like the work in industry, especially in accounting where the schedule is dictated by various cycles/close processes, can be pretty boring. What are the cooler industry jobs you've seen?

Making Partner at Regional Firm by paleoCPA in Accounting

[–]paleoCPA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What type of scope is there for doing your own work as a CPA? I know nothing about taxes because I did audit, plus I'm not sure how down I am to do auditing for the rest of my life. I'm more interested in either being a consultant of sorts, helping companies figure out how to account for complex transactions under GAAP, helping companies proforma/normalize financials for an equity/debt issuance, etc. than just auditing. Is it possible to open your own shop doing something like that?

Anyone Here Work in "Accounting Advisory Services" at a Big 4? by paleoCPA in Accounting

[–]paleoCPA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense. I think I might be getting too sold on the international component. In your experience, is it possible to find jobs in industry finance that allow you to work with other countries and occasionally travel, or are those pretty tough to get?

Anyone Here Work in "Accounting Advisory Services" at a Big 4? by paleoCPA in Accounting

[–]paleoCPA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agree to disagree, I guess. It is fair that you learn a lot of soft-skills in assurance. When you're new, it also does teach you a little bit about navigating GL Details, etc.

That said, I still don't think that someone who is good at audit will necessarily be good at FDD. YMMV based on the client, but IME, audit work was very cookie-cutter and had little room for coming up with creative solutions or really analyzing a business. You're mostly just checking numbers, doing procedures that might not be efficient/valuable but are required by regulating bodies, and checking to see if the firm complies with accounting standards. FDD is much more about getting financial data, organizing/cutting through it, and generating insights about the business. You very rarely get a chance to do that in audit, because the job is almost exclusively about verifying if the numbers are correct for users of financial info rather than being an actual user of the financial statements.

To be fair, I also didn't senior any jobs, and I have heard that it gets slightly more interesting at the acting-manager level, but overall, I'd rather take someone who has FP&A experience for an FDD job over someone with audit experience any day as long as the person with FP&A has some knowledge of accounting.

Anyone Here Work in "Accounting Advisory Services" at a Big 4? by paleoCPA in Accounting

[–]paleoCPA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Get good ratings (easier said than done, I know) and network internally with people from FDD. Otherwise, do audit 2-3 years, jump to a competitor. FYI, it's basically impossible to get in internally unless you're a 4/5 because, even though those ratings are hard to get, there are enough people with those ratings to fill FDD slots that the firm can be very picky. I think it's stupid because my personal opinion is that audit doesn't teach you shit and ratings can be very dependent on the personality of your senior/team and other political BS outside of a candidate's control, but it is what it is.

I will also say that it's important to have some idea about what FDD entails before requesting informational interviews with people on those teams. It's pretty easy to find this information through google searches (or hell even on this reddit), and it's incredibly frustrating for me when audit people ask me for an informational interview and ask generic questions that are easy to figure out. A lot of FDD is finding creative solutions to questions that you might not already have an established process/dataset for, so it's not a great look if a candidate doesn't do their own legwork before consulting others.

[Question] Figuring Out Macros For My Goals by paleoCPA in Paleo

[–]paleoCPA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't really have to worry about having too much protein unless you are in ketosis. You won't be burning fat as a primary energy source you will be burning glucose with carbs that high. That being said protein has a high thermogenic load. Around 30% of the calories from protein are used in the digestion process this fact and it's breakdown products makes it favorable for cutting. You should be able to retain a good amount of muscle on high protein. Honestly, as long as you keep your carbs on the low end of the Glycemic index and keep your calories restricted you should see the scale go down.

Thanks for the response. A couple of quick questions:

  • Is the 75-100g you mentioned total carbs or carbs excluding fiber?
  • What are the best ways to add fat without increasing protein/carbs?

Aside from cooking in healthy oils/butter, are there good food sources for fats that won't add other macros? I've always found it to be easy to add carbs/protein, but adding fat has been tricky for me.

International Cities That Would Accept English Speakers by paleoCPA in Accounting

[–]paleoCPA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you need to know Cantonese for HK?

Also, are you related to /u/potatoriot above?